San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Iran reports progress in nuclear talks
A senior Iranian official offered a cautiously upbeat assessment Saturday of talks aimed at bringing the United States back into world powers’ 2015 deal with Tehran on its nuclear program.
Iran has been negotiating with the five powers that remain in the agreement — France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China — in Vienna over the past two weeks. An American delegation also has been in Vienna, but not talking directly to Iran.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister said the talks had entered a new phase, adding that Iran had proposed draft agreements that could be a basis for negotiations.
“We think that the talks have reached a stage where parties are able to begin to work on a joint draft,” Abbas Araghchi told Iranian state television. “It seems that a new understanding is taking shape, and now there is agreement over final goals.”
The accord is aimed at preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, something it says it doesn’t want to do. It restricted Iran’s nuclear program in return for relief from U.S. and international sanctions. In 2018, thenPresident Donald Trump pulled the U.S. unilaterally out of the accord, opting for restored and additional American sanctions.
Since then, Iran has steadily violated restrictions in the deal. Tehran’s moves have been calculated to pressure the other participants to do more to offset crippling U.S. sanctions. President Biden has said he wants to bring the U.S. back into the deal but that Iran must reverse its violations. ITALY
Exminister to stand trial
A judge in Sicily on Saturday ordered former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini to stand trial for having refused to let a Spanish migrant rescue ship dock in an Italian port in 2019, keeping the people at sea for days.
Salvini, who attended the hearing in Palermo, insisted he was only doing his job and his duty by refusing entry to the ship and the 147 people it had rescued in the Mediterranean Sea.
“I’m going on trial for this, for having defended my country?” Salvini tweeted. “I’ll go with my head held high, also in your name.“
Palermo prosecutors have accused Salvini of dereliction of duty and kidnapping, for keeping the migrants at sea off the coast of Lampedusa for days in August 2019.
During the standoff, some of the migrants threw themselves overboard in desperation as the captain pleaded for a port. Eventually after a 19day ordeal, the remaining 83 migrants still on board were allowed to disembark. AEROSPACE
Space station crew returns
An American astronaut and two Russians have returned to Earth after six months aboard the International Space Station.
A Soyuz space capsule carrying NASA’s Kate Rubins and Russians Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey KudSverchkov landed early Saturday in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, said all three were feeling well after they were extracted from the capsule and began acclimating to the pull of gravity.
The three had arrived at the orbiting laboratory complex on Oct. 14. OREGON
Protesters clash with cops
Portland police said Saturday that they arrested four people after declaring a riot the night before when protesters smashed windows, burglarized businesses and set multiple fires during demonstrations that started after police fatally shot a man while responding to reports of a person with a gun. The vandalism came after the police shooting earlier Friday and was also part of demonstrations already planned for the night in the name of people killed in police shootings nationwide. They include 13yearold Adam Toledo of Chicago and Daunte Wright, a Black man in a Minneapolis suburb.
Portland has been the site of frequent protests, many involving violent clashes between officers and demonstrators, since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
FLORIDA
Trump ally sued over taxes
The Justice Department has sued Donald Trump’s ally Roger Stone, accusing the conservative provocateur and his wife of failing to pay nearly $2 million in income tax.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It alleges the couple underpaid their income tax by more than $1.5 million from 2007 until 2011 and separately alleges Stone also owes more than $400,000 for not fully paying his tax bill in 2018.
Stone, a longtime confidant of the former president’s, calls the lawsuit “politically motivated.”
Stone was charged in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and convicted at trial of lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election. Trump later commuted Stone’s sentence and pardoned him.